County has 45,000 more votes to tally

That will take 28 days for the San Joaquin County Registrar of Voters to audit and certify. And the process is more time-consuming than normal.

Registrar Austin Erdman and his staff will have company this month.

Just hours after the polls closed, the campaign staffs - and their lawyers - for Assemblymembers Bill Berryhill, R-Stockton, and Cathleen Galgiani, D-Stockton, were at the registrar's office door.

For weeks, the two have waged expensive, contentious campaigns for the 5th District seat in the state Senate.

Both parties viewed the seat as crucial to the potential super-majority control of the California Legislature's upper house.

Galgiani trails by 4,000 votes, but, even if she loses, Democrats will have the 27 votes needed to approve tax increases, pass emergency legislation and override gubernatorial vetoes.

"We're setting up how we're going to deal with the observers," Erdman said.

There are 45,000 votes left to count:

» 28,000 mail-in ballots that were hand-delivered Tuesday by voters to their polling sites. Erdman hopes to have those tallied by Nov. 16.

» 17,000 provision ballots, also cast Election Day. These are conditional ballots that typically involve first-time voters, lost ballots, voters who have moved or voters not on precinct rosters for unknown reasons. Every registrar in California has 28 days to finish that count.

"I'm not sure how long it's going to take us," Erdman said. The first step, he said, is to deal with the Election Day vote-by-mail ballots - a process expected to start today.

The remaining ballots total about 15 percent of the registered voters in San Joaquin County and an even-higher percentage of those who cast ballots.

Erdman won't know until today the exact number of county residents who voted. On Wednesday, after only a few hours of sleep, he revised an earlier estimate downward. "We're looking at around 70 percent."

The Berryhill-Galgiani race isn't the only one hanging in the balance. Two other races remain too close to call.